This Grand Life
Alpha 2.11 Minor Update
=Alpha 2.11 Update=
Added delete button on saved games page
Added page arrows for real estate on possessions page
Added withdraw all button to savings account
Added business founding year
Added disable camera following option
Allow viewing potential employees when roster is full for businesses
Fixed repayment amount not showing when applying for mortgage
Alpha 2.1 - New York City and Improved Events System
This update features New York as a new playable city, an updated Sydney map and an improved events system with more tempting special events.
https://youtu.be/tB8x3dI48wg
New York
In New York, you can start your life in the poorer neighbourhood of East Bronx, work your way into middle-class Queens and eventually live it up on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
The New York map itself has three traits that make it unique from other cities. Rent Control policies mean rental prices for low-cost housing are reduced by 10%. The city's status as a Financial Hub means all finance industry occupations pay 15% more. On the negative side, high density living means Traffic Jams greatly reduce the effectiveness of vehicles.
Each city now gets a unique location, and in New York it's the Statue Of Liberty. Here you can buy the special Liberty Display Shelf to start collecting different types of Statue Of Liberties, which are unique to this map. You might even get a chance to climb the statue head as a special event.
With the upgraded events system, 4th of July celebrations become quite the spectacle. There are fireworks and barbecues all over town for a large boost to fun and happiness. The Black Friday sales in the week after also make for some predictable and fantastic sales on electronic goods.
Sydney
The Sydney map has also received a facelift, with its own national day celebrations where you can "Throw Shrimp On Barbie".
It also gets two map traits. Beautiful Harbour adds the free Stare At View action to certain locations along the harbour. However, the Ex-Convict Colony trait means your robbery threshold for expensive housing is lowered by 20%. I want to add one more positive or neutral map trait to Sydney, but haven't thought of anything really good yet. Ideas are welcome!
You can go to the new Sydney Opera House location to watch a theatrical performance. Or purchase the Plush Toy Box to safely collect Australia's unique and dangerous wildlife in toy form.
What's Next?
Amsterdam in the Netherlands is the next city on my list, an interesting city which will make for some interesting traits. Also I will be working on adding end-game statistics, which should tie in nicely with the Steam Achievements system. There are quite a few improvements players have requested, I will try to squeeze them in as well.
Change Log
Test branch updated
Alpha 2.02 Minor Update
=Alpha 2.02=
- Fixed owning multiple businesses of same type causing supervisor confusion on available jobs
- Added 'Live' button to possessions panel for owned property
- Fixed half upfront payment display not showing for freelance jobs
- Added check for save file path existence before attempting load
- Price modifier buttons now show the amount changed
This Grand Life Alpha 2.0 - Education Loans, Factory and Engineering, and Transport Options
https://youtu.be/H4XuDm6moUU
Education Loans
Instead of paying the full price of education up front, you can now take out an education loan when applying to study degrees and diplomas. You can take a full loan for zero up front cost, or a partial loan for 50% up front cost. Alternatively, you can still pay the full fee to get a 15% discount.
If you decide to take out an education loan, the repayments won't start immediately. Instead, they begin slightly after the expected time to complete your education. For example, most diplomas are expected to take a year to complete so the loan repayments begin after 56 weeks. This adds a bit of urgency to complete your education before the repayments start.
Even though the repayments haven't started, the interest on the loan principle starts to accumulate from the moment you take the loan. The loan provider is quite generous though, and the interest charged is based on the savings rate rather than the higher personal loan rate.
Factory and Engineer Career Path
There is a new factory location that contains the engineering career path. In this career path, you can get your diploma pretty early to advance, and then follow up with a degree later on to get even further up the engineering career ladder.
The factory will generally be positioned away from the city center, so it provides a lucrative career path on the outskirts of town.
Transport Options
You can now purchase an electric scooter or a small car from the shopping mall. These vehicles help to reduce travel times between locations, but you get charged a maintenance fee every time you use them. The shorter the distance, the less efficient it is to run your vehicle so you have to decide whether your lifestyle is suited to using them.
Also, I know some people love their vehicles so you can give it a nickname by using the 'rename' button. The nickname will show up on your profile when riding it.
Auction Fees
You now get charged a fee when selling anything at auction, and also get charged an additional 5% fee if your object was successfully sold. This was added to handle a certain house-flipping strategy that was overpoweringly lucrative if you knew how to do it.
What's Next?
It's time to start work on the next fully-featured map - New York City! This will involve upgrading the events system (again). Depending on how long it takes, I might be able to squeeze in one or two other things as well.
Change Log
Test branch updated
Alpha 1.91 Minor Update
=Alpha 1.91=
- Added speed up auction button
- Add estimated value to property view
- Moved starting money into xml files
- Implemented personal tax deduction functionality
- Donate To Charity is now tax deductible
- Some possessions are now tax deductible
Alpha 1.9 - Supervisors And More Business Types
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU9jHsL2sC4
Your Business Supervisor
Now you can promote one of your employees to supervisor. A supervisor auto-assigns jobs to workers, improves productivity by motivating others and alerts you of any issues.
You need to take care in deciding who becomes supervisor. Firstly, they will demand a higher wage for the added responsibilities. Secondly, if you promote someone with low diligence, they will have a negative effect on the productivity of other workers. You have to decide whether it's worth the monetary savings to run a cut-price establishment with a dodgy supervisor.
You still have to decide which jobs to take and when to buy materials, the supervisor will not take on those responsibilities. However if you don't have enough materials to complete current jobs or you have idle workers, the supervisor will inform you.
More Business Types
There are three new business types in this update - Gardening Services, Private Security and Law Firm. Each type of business has different characteristics that affect how they are run.
The Gardening Business has low entry requirements, but doesn't pay much and the work is dirty (affects hygiene). The low pay means you will probably do most of the work yourself and have a hard time affording employees.
The Security Business has boring work, which reduces your fun a lot when doing jobs. In this case you might want to hire employees to do the hard work instead of doing it yourself.
The Law Firm has urgent jobs, so you will have less time to complete them than usual. The pay is great, but have some employees on standby and don't take on more than you can handle.
Other Changes
There are some other smaller changes like guerrilla marketing, "phoenix" corporations and balance adjustments. You can find the full list below (or leave it as a surprise).
Also, someone made a good point about the Real Estate Index being too smooth compared to the actual changes in home prices. The index was actually showing the underlying growth rate, not including the effect of current economic conditions. Now I've included the economic growth impact so you can see how overall home prices are really changing.
What's next?
I will be working on improvements to the education system to make it easier to start a diploma or degree. There is also one more location I want to add before I consider the "default" map with 20 unique locations complete. Once that is done, I can start work on a new city map.
Changelog
Here is the full list of changes from 1.84 to 1.9:
Test branch updated
Also, the Triple Grand Competition is closing soon so get your entries in for your chance to win a portrait in the game http://steamcommunity.com/app/695600/discussions/0/2381701715729492703/
Alpha 1.8 - Stock Market and Luxury Views
What's new?
Alpha 1.8 is out with the new Stock Market feature. Note you need to start a new game for the location to appear.
https://youtu.be/YoJiGaptwVQ
It's not in its proper real-life location on the Sydney map, but things are getting pretty crowded in the city center so I had to "relocate" it.
When you enter the stock market, you are presented with a list of 12 corporations ranging from the billion-dollar "MONEY Group" to the fresh new start-up "Orange Inc.". The larger companies are generally more stable and less likely to go bankrupt, but the smaller companies have higher future earning potential.
Once you have purchased some shares, a new section will appear on your Possessions panel summarizing your investments in the market.
This is the first version of this feature, so there will probably be further tweaks required. One of my main concerns is whether it's too easy to predict the market direction and make money, so feedback on that is welcome.
One thing I didn't mention in my last post, now the Penthouse and Mansion has luxurious versions of the base actions. E.g instead of Staring at the Wall, you will be Staring at the View which gives a boost to your happiness. You also have access to the Personal Butler home service, who recovers most of your needs each week. You have to pay him/her an actual salary though, so it's very expensive.
What's next?
Next is improving the Freelance/Contractor Business part of the game, since a lot of players are excited to start that up. I will be experimenting with auto-assigning workers and some post-career businesses over the coming weeks.